this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I thought I'll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!

I'll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (6 children)

I'm running Endeavour OS (KDE Plasma) and ran into a weird issue with my graphics. It's like windows sometimes flicker and flight with each other, some fullscreen videos won't play and just lock to a gray screen instead (e.g. in Steam, though YouTube is oddly fine), and most 3D games are super choppy and unplayable.

I'm not asking how to fix this, I just want to know how I start troubleshooting! I haven't done anything special with my system, and I think the issue started after a normal pacman update. My GPU is a GeForce GTX 1060.

Any suggestions to get started? I don't even know if the issue is Nvidia drivers, X, window manager, KDE, etc.

EDIT: The problem was Wayland. Fixed by logging in with X11 instead!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (12 children)

How do people not using Debian/Ubuntu follow along with tutorials when their package manager doesn't have a package that's in Apt?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I typically search the package name + fedora, it will probably tell me the alternative package that is in fedora.

Nowadays, I have moved to an atomic fedora distro, so I would severely limit the amount of package I install on my system for stability and security.

I think I only have two packages installed on my machine: fish, because it is the only popular shell that follows xdg dir; and a latex-like input method to use in slack.

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[–] crazyCat 5 points 7 months ago (14 children)

I use Kali Linux for cybersecurity work and learning in a VM on my Windows computer. If I ever moved completely over to Linux, what should I do, can I use Kali as my complete desktop?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

No never! Do not use Kali as main OS choose Debian, Fedora, RHEL (not designed for this use case) or Arch system

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (8 children)

How can I run a sudo command automatically on startup? I need to run sudo alsactl restore to mute my microphone from playing In my own headphones on every reboot. Surely I can delegate that to the system somehow?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Running something at start-up can be done multiple ways:

  • look into /etc/rc.d/rc.local
  • systemd (or whatever init system you use)
  • cron job
[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Try paveaucontrol, it has an option to lock settings plus it's a neat app to call when you need to customise settings. You could also add user to the group that has access to mic.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

How do I install one Linux image to multiple machines at once?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

How do programs that measure available space like 'lsblk', 'df', 'zfs list' etc see hardlinks and estimate disk space.

If I am trying to manage disk space, does the file system correctly display disk space (for example a zfs list)? Or does it think that I have duplicate files/directories because it can't tell what is a hardlink?

Also, during move operations, zfs dataset migrations, etc... does the hardlinked file continue tracking where the original is? I know it is almost impossible at a system level to discern which is the original.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not super familiar with ZFS so I can't elaborate much on those bits, but hardlinks are just pointers to the same inode number (which is a filesystem's internal identifier for every file). The concept of a hardlink is a file-level concept basically. Commands like lsblk, df etc work on a filesystem level - they don't know or care about the individual files/links etc, instead, they work based off the metadata reported directly by the filesystem. So hardlinks or not, it makes no difference to them.

Now this is contrary to how tools like du, ncdu etc work - they work by traversing thru the directories and adding up the actual sizes of the files. du in particular is clever about it - if one or more hardlinks to a file exists in the same folder, then it's smart enough to count it only once. Other file-level programs may or may not take this into account, so you'll have to verify their behavior.

As for move operations, it depends largely on whether the move is within the same filesystem or across filesystems, and the tools or commands used to perform the move.

When a file or directory is moved within the same filesystem, it generally doesn't affect hardlinks in a significant way. The inode remains the same, as do the data blocks on the disk. Only the directory entries pointing to the inode are updated. This means if you move a file that has hardlinks pointing to it within the same filesystem, all the links still point to the same inode, and hence, to the same content. The move operation does not affect the integrity or the accessibility of the hardlinks.

Moving files or directories across different filesystems (including external storage) behaves differently, because each filesystem has its own set of inodes.

  • The move operation in this scenario is effectively a copy followed by a delete. The file is copied to the target filesystem, which assigns it a new inode, and then the original file is deleted from the source filesystem.

  • If the file had hardlinks within the original filesystem, these links are not copied to the new filesystem. Instead, they remain as separate entities pointing to the now-deleted file's original content (until it's actually deleted). This means that after the move, the hardlinks in the original filesystem still point to the content that was there before the move, but there's no link between these and the newly copied file in the new filesystem.

I believe hardlinks shouldn't affect zfs migrations as well, since it should preserve the inode and object ID information, as per my understanding.

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